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As human beings we want a lot of things, it’s the decisions that lead us to where we are & that makes us who we are.

The first thing to remember towards making smarter choices is knowing what your goals are. What do you want to become in life? What are you REALLY REALLY good at? This also has to be your priority number 1.

Focus all your energy and time on this. For example, if you want to pursue hospitality studies or an MBA, put in your heart, soul and mind to doing it. Ultimately it’s your life. It’s important to know what your goals are to going after them.

Analyse your strengths and weaknesses pertaining to your goals and work towards them day in and day out. Weaknesses ultimately turn to strengths which is why you should work on them to the best of your capabilities. Analysing these makes you self-aware of yourself.

The last thing to remember is to always follow your gut. Some of the best decisions are made with the gut. Or if that doesn’t help flip a coin based on your choices and whatever turns up go with it. Always do what’s right. Doing the right thing always helps. The more you do it the less regrets you have in life.

Has it ever happened to you that your work performance with your peers has been great but you still don’t feel confident enough?

And no matter how much you practice and try, these situations reoccur and can cause hindrance in your progress. However, there is an answer to such issues. NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming is a technique that helps you take charge of your thoughts, emotions and behavior.

What happens in an NLP session and how does it work?

Certified NLP practitioners train your brain in such a way that you can overcome your hesitations, fears, and restrictive mental conditioning. It liberates you from your old patterns that you have not been able to break with a conscious mind. It helps you sharpen your logical and decision-making abilities and explore your potential to the fullest.

What benefits can one experience from NLP?

NLP helps create new patterns, which make you more efficient and support you in every field of life. Whether you are a student, housewife, artist or a professional.

One can experience improvements in the following aspects of life amongst others:

Motivation

Resourcefulness and relationships in career

Habits and addictions

Tension

Anxiety

Confidence

Self-esteem

Public speaking and communication

Decision making

Stress

Illnesses

Pain

Past trauma

Fears and phobias

Achieving goals

To gain an understanding of how NLP works and experience many of its advantages, join a training program or a workshop on NLP. Not only will you feel empowered but also enjoy their interactive and unique approach.

No matter how skilled, or on top-of-the-game we are, interviews always tend to make us nervous. There are just too many uncertainties and the stakes are too high. A lot could go awry, based on who the interviewer is and his perception towards the candidate. The only thing we have in control is the way we present ourselves and the way we answer the questions.

A lot of people are unaware that, the way they answer the questions can put them in the driving seat as far as the interview is concerned. Not the obvious, correct, well-worded, and confident answer but the answer that compels the interviewer to ask you what you want to answer next.

Here are some tested and tried ways that people have adopted to turn the interview questions to their advantage:

1.Extend your Introduction

“Tell me about yourself.” This question is the golden ticket for you to include exactly what you’d like the interviewers to get piqued about. Remember, in an interview, it is not just your education and skills that they want, but also want someone interesting and with a ‘personality’. Anything out-of-the-box like unique hobbies, volunteer work, etc. interests the interviewer and influences them to ask questions about it, giving you a chance to reveal more of yourself to them.

2.Talk about past experiences

Questions about your past experience gives you a chance to highlight your skills and achievements which cannot be put on paper. For example, if in the past, you’ve done successful crisis management, lay it out with a history of the situation and how you warded off the crisis with a strategic approach. Inevitably, questions like how, when and your learnings, etc. will follow, leading the conversation in your chosen direction.

3.Show interest in the question topic

While you need to be enthusiastic throughout your interview, you can always raise the interviewer’s curiosity on certain topics by showing extra interest in the question and its answer. It leads them to asking more questions on the same topic.

Experiential learning, simply explained, is a process of learning through first-hand experience. It is a method of acquiring expertise and skill through practical application of concepts, theories and problem solving techniques instead of just reading or hearing about them.

Why Experiential Learning?

The purpose of experiential learning is to have you world-ready by the time you complete the education program. For professionals who are already working, experiential learning will help them in enhancing skills and managing their roles effectively. It makes use of tools like internships, service-training, field work and practical activities to impart learning. Its approach is more about what you need to know and less about what can be taught.

Advantages of Experiential Learning

Experiential learning encourages application of knowledge and concepts to real- world situations with learning support from the trainer. Some key advantages of this method of learning are:

Accelerates Learning

‘Learning by doing’ is far more effective and long lasting than theoretical learning. Further, experiential learning also promotes development of multiple skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and effective decision-making at the same time.

A Learning Environment With A Safety Net

Since experiential learning involves working on real-world situation simulations, it offers the students freedom to think and operate differently without crushing their confidence if anything goes wrong.

Merging Of Theory And Practice

What has been learnt from books can now be applied in field to understand its effect and behaviour. It also helps in remembering concepts and ideas.

Increases Team Work

experiential learning engages participants in various team-based activities thus training them on team building and leadership. This benefits the participants because they learn from each other and also because they will have to work in a team in a professional environment.

Assessing Learning Is Easier and Accurate

Simulation of a real-world situation with optimal outcomes, shows whether participants are able to understand the concepts as expected or not.

Motivation to Learn and Impactful Activities

These are the indirect yet important advantages of experiential learning. The method encourages active participation and kindles a desire to learn.

“The secret of crisis management is not good vs. bad, it’s preventing bad from getting worse.”

A crisis can occur anytime. There are no tools to completely safeguard an institution or a business from a crisis. However, one can develop effective crisis management practices to bring situations under control at workplace before they become catastrophic.

Check out these 4 key ways to manage crisis effectively and restore balance at workplace:

1) Timeliness

“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”

The first step to crisis management is having a crisis management plan ready beforehand for exigencies. You won’t have the time to formulate one when trouble starts.

Do not delay responding to the crisis. Don’t assume it will blow over because it won’t. Respond quickly and factually.

2) Handling Information

“In absence of information, we jump to the worst conclusion.”

Information is the key to managing any situation. Without ample information, the team involved will be handicapped or worse, misguided, when it comes to doing damage control. Hence, pass all necessary information about the situation and its background to core team promptly and properly.

At the same time, snub out any inaccurate information that might be circulating, by responding to it.

All stakeholders, media, and public should receive information on a regular basis too. Keep it simple with no room for speculation.

3) Communication

“Problems can be solved just by communicating.”

Assign a spokesperson representing the organization till things settle down, All communication beyond your core team should go through this single channel.

Don’t be afraid to communicate empathy and concern towards those adversely affected by the crisis.

Don’t dodge questions, if you don’t have an appropriate response or information, say that you will get back on that. Avoid the ‘no comment’ approach – it’s murky.

It is better to reveal the bad news yourself, instead of trying to hide it and letting an external source discover it.

4) Ownership

“Keep calm and take Ownership.”

Probably the best thing you can do to salvage a situation and your reputation, is taking ownership. If you have made mistakes be courageous to acknowledge it than evade the same.

Educational institutes in India are largely adopting industrial visits as a value-added learning method for management students. Learning from textbooks, lectures and other study material does not suffice for holistic learning. Practical, hands-on learning is essential for better understanding of work processes and business functions.

Industrial visits give greater clarity about important management concepts, as students practically experience how these concepts are put into action.

7 benefits of Industrial Visits for management students:

For students pursuing professional education (Marketing/Finance/Operations/Supply Chain etc.), industrial visits help them gain hands-on experience of how industry operations are executed.

Industry visits bridge the gap between theoretical training and practical learning in a real-life environment.

Time management is a much talked about, yet, one of the most overlooked managerial attributes.

As a manager, a professional’s key responsibility is to manage his/her time while helping the team to manage their own. Not only is effective and efficient time management beneficial, but it is also critical to an individual’s and organization’s success.

Here are 5 essential tips you would want to follow for effective time management:

PRIORITIZE:

There will always be multiple things to be done together. But by understanding what is most critical and of the highest importance, that you, as a manager will be able to allocate time to tasks. With proper prioritization and careful management of deprioritized tasks, you can bring order to chaos, reduce stress, and manage time smartly.

ONE-THING-AT-A-TIME:

Remember when our teachers in school used to reprimand us for trying to do too many things at a time? We need to recall that and implement it in our professional lives too. As a manager, you are expected to do multiple things like answering emails, making proposals, reports, attending calls etc. – all at the same time. Hence it is highly essential that you handle one type of tasks at a time and move on to the next, only when you finish the previous one.

SET SPECIFIC GOALS:

Effective and efficient time management calls for setting ‘smart’ goals. It motivates you to work in a time-bound manner. However, ‘goal-setting’ does not merely end with setting goals. You need to chart out a plan of action to realize these goals. And most importantly, you should stick to the action plan that you have created. That is when you would know if you are able to accomplish it in a timeline you have set.

COMMUNICATE:

At times, when you are trying to accomplish multiple tasks, you might not be able to communicate in an ideal manner. But effective communication is indispensable for managing time efficiently, especially for high priority tasks where you must set aside time to communicate with the people involved. Consequently, you would realize that just by communicating at the right time, with the right people, you are able to manage your time.

TAKE-A-BREAK:

Sometimes, when we try to handle a lot of responsibilities, fatigue gets to us. Hence, it is necessary to take a break and refresh your mind so that you come back recharged with more productivity. Experts believe that more you space out your thoughts, the better you are able to think and with clarity. This not only helps you achieve your goals but also instills positivity within your team.

As a part of management studies, aspiring managers, executives and professionals are taught about time management. Online Hybrid PGDM programs impart training to enhance time management skills through various interactive workshops, simulation exercises, experiential learning and so on.

So learn to value your time just as you would value your money. After all, “time is money”, essentially, isn’t it?